Survivor's guilt

Most crime fiction focuses on criminals and the investigators who pursue them. In his ninth novel, Michael Koryta takes an unusual tack: “The Prophet” tells a compelling story about what happens to the survivors of victims of violent crime.

Most crime fiction focuses on criminals and the investigators who pursue them. In his ninth novel, Michael Koryta takes an unusual tack: “The Prophet” tells a compelling story about what happens to the survivors of victims of violent crime.

Koryta published his first novel, a mystery titled “Tonight I Say Goodbye,” when he was 21. He followed that with four more traditional crime novels, then three books of crime fiction tinged with supernatural elements. In “The Prophet” he returns to realistic crime fiction, although the novel certainly has its share of ghosts, creating a powerful psychological portrait of two brothers whose lives were shattered by their sister's terrible death.

As “The Prophet” opens, Adam and Kent Austin are still feeling the echoes of the murder of Marie 22 years before, when she was a high school student. Kent, the youngest sibling, is now a revered high school football coach, pushing his team toward a state championship, and a happily married family man. Adam is a bail bondsman, a job that dovetails with his cynical, lone-wolf personality and occasional surges of aggression; he's romantically involved with a woman whose husband is serving time. Although they both still live in their small hometown in Ohio, the brothers haven't spoken in years.

Then another young woman is murdered. She isn't family, but she is the girlfriend of one of Kent's star players. And, just as he did when Marie was killed, Adam feels a sense of responsibility . The night his sister died, Adam was supposed to give her a ride home just five blocks from their school. Instead, he left her to walk and spent the evening making love to his girlfriend. Somewhere in those five blocks, Marie was abducted.

The man convicted of taking and killing her died in prison, but there seems to be a connection to the Austins in the new crime. Then someone makes graphic threats against Kent's family, and both brothers find themselves caught up in a potentially deadly game.

Confrontation with evil is a theme throughout “The Prophet,” along with its corollary: how we behave in the face of it. Koryta skillfully contrasts the two brothers, telling the story from their alternating points of view and ratcheting up the suspense.